Holly & Heather’s Helpful Hint: Enjoy the Treats of the Season!

by helpinghandstwins

One of our annual Christmas traditions includes having a cookie party! In addition to sharing great treats with our friends and loved ones, we play games, have an ornament swap and enjoy the company. We’d like to share a couple of the delicious baked items we made this week!

Holly’s Christmas Pinwheel Cookies

This easy recipe was actually made with 4 packages of refrigerated already prepared sugar cookie dough to save time (who doesn’t need to save time this month!) but feel free to make a traditional dough from scratch. In addition, cocoa powder, peppermint extract and green or red food coloring is also needed.

Roll out 2 packages of the dough into 2 rectangles about 1/4 inch thick each. Take the third package of dough and mix with 1-2 tablespoons of cocoa until the dough turns brown. Then roll the chocolate dough out to a rectangle and place on top of one of the plain sugar cookie dough rectangles. Take the last dough package and mix with a drop or two of peppermint extract (a little goes a long way) and a few drops of either red or green food coloring until you have the color you like. Then roll the peppermint dough into a rectangle and place it on top of the remaining plain sugar cookie dough rectangle. Cut each of the dough rectangles in half. Refrigerate dough for five minutes. Carefully roll each rectangle to resemble a pinwheel looking log. Then slice into 1/2 inch cookies, place two inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 12-14 minutes. Cool before eating. So festive!

Pre-heat oven to 350. Cream together both sugars and butter with mixer on medium. Add eggs, vanilla and molasses and beat on medium. Add sifted whole wheat flour, baking soda and cinnamon, hand mix until combined. Add oats and butterscotch chips and mix well by hand. Scoop out rounded tablespoons of dough onto ungreased cookie sheet and bake 10-11 minutes. Cool and store covered. Cookies will be dark due to the molasses. Delicious!